The Coanda effect is named for Cody Andrew Arnold Jr., also known as "DJ Coanda" who was an early hip hop producer, amateur racer and car fanatic. Think Jeff Townes meets Jay Leno, but in the early 70s.

A focused workaholic, Coanda would often listen to new albums or demos while racing, and he found that his performance varied depending on the music he was listening to on his headphones. In simple terms, while listening to fast music your perception of speed changes - your reactions and ability to process the physical and visual feedback are heightened, however you're unable to sustain this state of concentration for long periods.

Coanda spent some time trying to construct playlists to accompany his driving but without much success, the ebb and flow of a race being unpredictable he'd push too hard at the wrong times and find himself mentally exhausted when put under pressure by his rivals. Mixtapes have to rise and fall.

But driving home from a race one night, he tuned in on his radio to a show hosted by a friend and realised that what he really needed to solve the problem was a private radio show, a DJ in the pitlane to help manage his racing. Under the guidance of a pitlane DJ, Coando stormed to victory after victory with his rivals noticing the upturn in fortunes brought by his little private radio station. The Coanda effect was born.

From humble beginnings of amateur racing with friends, the Coanda effect has been adopted by professional racers around the world, with significant gains but some notable failures.

Lewis Hamilton does his flying laps in qualifying to "Ghetto Muzik" by Big Boi (from Outkast) over the radio. Vettel has a custom made recording of Flight of the Valkyries at triple speed. Kimi Raikkonen races to the songs of Scandinavian metal bands, but his qualifying music is a closely guarded secret - certain sources have suggested that he listens to the beeping noises made by old 56k modems.

The driver/DJ relationship takes a lot of development however - Romain Grosjean and his DJ (Fausse Manip) being a classic example. Rumour has it that Fausse Manip's decision to play a track from the Linkin Park and Jay-z collaboration album was behind the accident at Spa. Hulkenberg's smash into Hamilton at Interlagos is believed to be linked to the DJ accidentally plugging in his daughter's iPod and playing Friday by Rebecca Black.

Coughlan is hoping to avoid a repeat of Maldonado's various accidents over the last couple of years. The crash with Hamilton in Valencia was mainly down to the Venezuelan being fatigued after a few too many fast tracks - although I'm reliably informed that the collision with Perez at Silverstone was because Maldonado had lost a bet with his DJ the night before, for which the DJ suddenly played "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.

Back to Coanda himself, his death remains something of a mystery. It seems that he had an accident while driving at high speed but leapt from his car way before impact. Of course, leaping from a moving vehicle at speed is somewhat dangerous, as he found out.

The question is: why? Some suspect it was a suicide attempt, but there's a lot of speculation that it was a deliberate attempt to use his car as a missile to attack a rival producer, whose car he may have spotted just ahead. Coanda wasn't generally seen as a violent man, but the Munroe effect (named for its discoverer, ex-NASA physicist Randall Munroe, summarised here : http://xkcd.com/103/) may be to blame for a loss of moral and ethical reasoning.

Or....

I suppose it might be a reference to an aerodynamic effect discovered by Henri Coandă. There's a delightfully precise Wikipedia page on the actual science, but the F1 dictionary page gives a surprisingly detailed explanation of the aerodynamic principles and their applications to Formula 1 exhausts :

http://www.formula1-dictionary.net/coanda_effect.html

I presume by KERS you aren't referring to the Kenny Everett Rocket Sled, Sam?